poetry & essays

Category Archives: shortlings

Each time I try to find
the edge of space, searching
in the darkest part of blue,
past stars and their hangers on
orbiting a single mote of dust,
it turns out I’m that bird
expecting infinity but
finding sudden glass.

The eye sees silk,
pale green perhaps,
hanging loose over oiled bamboo,
and waits for a breath to set it floating.
A sail slowly calling to the skin,
conjuring a weightless cover
settling without fanfare,
suddenly warm when it rests
on breasts, or arms, or flanks,
then sparking shivers as
a hand pulls it
slowly away.

perhaps the stars
hold memories
diamond pinholes
punched in winter black
life stretched
across infinity
expanding overhead
even as my focus
might be squeezing in
and only looking back
a tempting counterweight
to shrinking time
well nuts to that
I’ll take the milky way
with thanks
refusing blinkered days
or thoughts
and will not shut
all possibility away
this heart and soul
are slated to remain
open for business
indefinitely

In and out of light, driving
on a road into the hills.
To the left, a wall of rock
with innards blown away
to upright face. Brief travel
with a hawk. Its shadow leaps
onto the road, then
passes over me, and for a flash
I follow him, to fly out
over still-leafed rising shapes,
light-footed mist escaping
from their folds, bits of thought
deposited by rain, caught on
the arms of trees. Memory tucked into
shadow, waiting for the sun
to lift it clear and dance again.

there is movement
in the daily flow of green
to full on spring
as bud fists loosen grips
or fern nubs thrust up clumpy heads
and hillsides morph to verdigris

reminding me of childhood nights
spent time-stretched
jumping tick to tock
wrapped in wild impatient
longing for the morning
and its gifts to come

in truth the journey
through that wait
or days lived blossomless
are weighted to the same degree
because this moment’s beauty is
the only certainty we have

_______________________________
a shortling for 5/5. spring has been excruciatingly slow this year for us. yet even as we creep along, just knowing the apple tree will blossom, or the lilacs bloom, is such a gift.

so it began
another opening salvo
written grapeshot
sibling letters
masking fury longhand
weighted by a lifetime’s
alkaline asides
presupposing mal intent
in every word
an older generation
hamstrung by
paper clad
civility

________________________________
Day 16 of NaPoWriMo, where the prompt was an almanac poem, one of the items being a scrap of a letter. clearing out my family’s place in Rhode Island (emptying a place filling my soul) we found hundred of letters, one of which began “molly, formerly dear molly”. while I found this amusing, clearly the writer, and one supposes the recipient, did not.